Prescribed Scalar Curvature on Compact Manifolds Under Conformal Deformation

Abstract

We give sufficient and "almost" necessary conditions for the prescribed scalar curvature problems within the conformal class of a Riemannian metric $ g $ for both closed manifolds and compact manifolds with boundary, including the interesting cases $ \mathbb{S}^{n} $ or some quotient of $ \mathbb{S}^{n} $, in dimensions $ n \geqslant 3 $, provided that the first eigenvalues of conformal Laplacian (with appropriate boundary conditions if necessary) are positive. When the manifold is not some quotient of $ \mathbb{S}^{n} $, we show that, on one hand, any smooth function that is a positive constant within some open subset of the manifold with arbitrary positive measure, and has no restriction on the rest of the manifold, is a prescribed scalar curvature function of some metric under conformal change; on the other hand, any smooth function $ S $ is almost a prescribed scalar curvature function of Yamabe metric within the conformal class $ [g] $ in the sense that an appropriate perturbation of $ S $ that defers with $ S $ within an arbitrarily small open subset is a prescribed scalar curvature function of Yamabe metric. When the manifold is either $ \mathbb{S}^{n} $ or $ \mathbb{S}^n / Γ$ with Kleinian group $ Γ$ we show that any positive function that satisfies a technical analytical condition, called CONDITION B, can be realized as a prescribed scalar curvature functions on these manifolds.